Secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed new details about how the United States manipulated last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen. The cables show how the United States sought dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming, how financial and other aid was used to gain political backing, and how the United States mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the...

Even as the world faces a series of extreme weather events that scientists warn is related to global warming, international climate negotiations are moving at a glacial pace. The latest round of climate talks in Bonn, Germany, ended last week, and diplomats have just one more short meeting in China in the coming months to hash out their differences before the critical high-level climate conference in Cancún, Mexico, at the end of the year. We...

Alberto Acosta is the Former President of the Constituent Assembly as well as a former minister of Energy in Ecuador. Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous caught up with Acosta at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia last week.

One of the higher-profile participants at the Cochabamba climate conference was the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto. A Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua, d’Escoto served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega’s government from 1979 to 1990. He joins us to talk about the failures of the UN, the importance of the Bolivia climate summit, why Latin America doesn’t need the...

We pay a visit to Radio Gente 94.7 FM, the Cochabamba radio station that airs Democracy Now! in Spanish. Democracy Now! broadcasts on more than 250 stations across Latin America. [includes rush transcript]

As the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba closes, we speak to Bolivian President Evo Morales about the US decision to cut off climate aid to Bolivia; narcotrafficking; the tenth anniversary of the Water Wars in Cochabamba; the protest at the San Cristóbal silver mine; and the contradiction between promoting the environment and extractive industries — oil/natural gas exploration, mining.

The Regional Federation of Peasant Workers of the South Altiplano (FRUCTAS) is a grassroots organization of community members from Nor Lípez province of the central Potosí region of Bolivia. They are in the midst of a struggle against the Japanese trading giant Sumitomo Corporation, which owns the massive San Cristóbal mine. We speak with Francisco Quisbert Salinas, the ex-leader of FRUCTAS. [includes rush transcript]

A few blocks from the main entrance to the university where the peoples’ climate summit is taking place, hundreds of Bolivian and Latin American environmentalists have been crowding into a single hall to participate in discussions that they say were too controversial for the actual summit. Dubbed "mesa 18," or "working group 18," the discussions were focused on the environmental destruction inside Bolivia caused by...

As Bolivian President Evo Morales is being celebrated internationally for hosting the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth, some Bolivian environmentalists and conservationists have questioned Morales’ domestic policies. In northern Bolivia, Morales has supported oil exploration and other development inside the Madidi National Park. The region is considered one of the most biodiverse areas on earth. On...

In the Andean highlands of South America, climate change isn’t just an abstract threat. In Bolivia, glaciers are melting at what experts say is an alarming rate as a result of rising global temperatures. We speak with Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, about the melting glaciers, climate change and water. [includes rush transcript]